The role of digitalisation and smart grids
An essential ingredient in the global energy revolution, digitalisation is underpinning numerous aspects of the renewables journey. From asset management to asset intelligence through AI, and from data management based on blockchain to the connected Industrial Internet of Things, digitalisation in all its guises is helping to unlock the full potential of renewable energy, from delivering operational efficiency through to enabling consumers to drive up their own energy efficiency.
Smart grid technology will enable the effective management and distribution of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hybrid systems.
Defined by the EU Commission back in 2013, a ‘smart grid’ can be seen as an electricity network that can integrate, in a cost-efficient manner, the behaviour and actions of all users connected to it in order to ensure an economically efficient and sustainable power system with low losses and high levels of quality, security of supply and safety. This includes generators, consumers, and those who both generate and consume (prosumers).
Smart grids – created by linking electricity grids, utility companies and consumers through networking systems, cloud computing and utilising ‘big data’ solutions – allow energy distribution to become a two-way process.
The result: data from energy users can be quickly fed back to the energy providers in real time, helping them to adjust their capacity quickly and efficiently, with faults quickly identified.
Smart grids can support power systems to immediately identify and isolate issues, helping energy to be restored to users more quickly. But perhaps most importantly, smart grids allow much greater flexibility when it comes to coping with peaks and troughs in energy demand.
To find out more about how digitalisation is transforming the renewable energy sector, please read our white paper: Digitalisation and the transformation of the energy value chain.
Fig. 7 – Investment in smart grids by technology area, 2014-2019
How global investment (USD bn) in smart grids by technology area has changed over the years 2014 to 2019
Source: International Energy Agency